


Who is in Control?

by circlegirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (it's kinda both), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Control Issues, Corruption, Death, Demonic Possession, Demons, F/F, F/M, Gore, Hell, Multi, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Plotty, Power Dynamics, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rare Characters, Rare Pairings, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-27 20:48:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5063581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circlegirl/pseuds/circlegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bela Talbot's story did not end when she arrived in Hell. The clock's not running anymore, and she really doesn't want to be in anyone else's control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sell Your Soul For Control

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: there are mentions of past abuse and there is torture, but it's not very graphic.

You chose to start torturing other souls immediately. You remember the _point_ of it; you didn’t crack. You didn’t give in to that demon who started hacking into a body you couldn’t even comprehend, considering you knew it was shredded to pieces on Earth. You weren't even in pain long, but that didn't change how you just needed to be given the option, and that came pretty quick. Your torturer must’ve seen the coldness that you’d had from your life, that you’d already been hardened and destroyed enough, because it was barely any time at all before you were in the position of being the torturer.

You wonder if the demon understood you or if they just thought you were heartless. You suppose you must be, but you’d _much_ rather be in pain yourself than have someone else be in pain. You’d suffer for probably eternity and never give in if it were a matter of pain.

But you refused for someone to be in power over you. “ _Not anymore,_ ” you thought. Because you know that that was inevitable in your existence, but it’d also been your whole life. You whole damn life, and you certainly weren’t going to let it go on any longer than you could.

You traded up and up and hoped to trade enough to spare your life and get out of the contract you’d gotten into and actually start a life. You wanted to be as untouchable as possible. You didn’t feel because you’d disconnected yourself from that.

You’d spent your entire life running. And someone was always in power over you. Whether it was when you were just a little girl, confused and in pain, or after that, dealing with the consequence of it, and having demons rule your life with a stopwatch counting down to a day when you were twenty-four.

You never lived life. How could you live life when you’re running from both the past and the future? People stole that from you. You were always in someone else’s power.

No, that demon doesn’t understand that at all. But you guess he gets you in a way only Dean Winchester really ever did: he gets that you are far too damaged to react to any situation normally. You give in so quickly that the pain you received in that part of hell was not as bad as the pain you’d received on Earth.

Physically.

You actually laugh when you’re in a position of power over someone else. You’re to torture this man, probably a murderous psychopath but possibly a fucked-up kid like you, or you end up with someone so immediately above you in power once again.

You suppose you have to work the system, but you know that you really only have one true destiny anymore.

You’ll reach the top. You couldn’t before; not with Lilith holding a contract limiting you to ten years on the Earth’s surface. Now you can.

You will be above everyone.

 

\---

 

You’re so broken you don’t realise how young you are. You’re so broken you don’t realise that you can get so much more messed up than you already are. You’re so broken that you _really don’t care._

You know, somewhere in the back of a head that still fully remembers its past from the fact it probably has only been a week and you’ve probably only been tortured for a few hours of it, that if you hadn’t been so broken you could’ve fixed yourself. Maybe you could’ve lived past twenty-four.

But how could you ever trust anyone, especially someone who doesn’t trust you? How could you open yourself up and ask for help? Somewhere, you know that the Winchesters would’ve helped you. Maybe if you could’ve made it beneficial towards them in some way, maybe if you played them right and made them think with their less-broken hearts and not their panic for Dean’s predicament as well.

You wonder if you’ll ever get to torture Dean. One day you ask about it--it’s not unheard of to make these sort of calls and you wonder if a certain fear that you have about another man that is certainly in hell influenced your first decision in this place at all as well--but the response you get is from an angry sickle-handling maniac who yells at you noOoOoO. She tells you that Dean Winchester is fair above your meager level. Dean Winchester is _important_. He deserves special treatment that you could _never_ achieve.

You don’t know what this means, but you know that your “torturing” is pretty horrible. You want to get creative, and maybe it’s because you just haven’t been at it long enough, but you end up just drawing art into flesh. It’s enough to make a person scream and beg, but for you it’s just enough to get lost in the act of it. You focus your creativity on the design, not the pain you’re eliciting.

To get higher up, would you need to change this? To make it so you don’t end back up in the torturer’s place (more importantly, with someone having 100% control over you), would you need to get better at making a person be in pain?

You’re _really_ good at not really being in situations. You’ve been avoiding a past and a future (and during that past and during that future, the present) for so long, you just know right how to disconnect. You suppose you could get better at causing pain, but a part of you is concerned that to do that you’d actually have to think about the fact you’re causing pain. But that part of you also tries to smother that fact because that means that you could get more messed up, and you don’t want to think about that. You don’t want to think about how much worse you could get.

You just want to get there.

A small part of you wonders if you could get into making demon deals, like the demon who originally contracted away your soul. You decide that to stomach that you might need to slice up quite a few more souls.

But, truth be told, you don’t regret your fourteen year old decision. You wished that you could’ve killed him yourself, but the truth is you really are making the same decisions now. You will always sell your soul if it means that you are the one in control.

You suppose selling your soul isn’t the best way to be in control.

But you also think that with enough drive and enough of your own internal power, it could be. And it’s not like you ever really had many options.


	2. Words Whispered on a Plane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I know what happened to your girlfriend! She must have died screaming! Even now, she's burning!"  
> -demon, Phantom Traveller.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (remember this is set in hell)

Days go by and you’re better at being inconspicuous about it. You love the art of torture, but not when it means you’re thinking about the person _being_ in pain. So you’re not very good at it. But you’re good at being mediocre at it. You suppose you’re good at not losing yourself to the violence of it, but rather losing yourself in the act of it so much you’re not really there during it.

It’s when you’re beginning to carve a valentine heart over this girl’s heart, that you notice something odd about her.

You realise she must’ve sold her soul because you can taste the _goodness_ off her, and you only get that with people who are stupid enough to sell their souls (unlike you, you made it so your trip to hell was worth it. You would’ve gotten here anyways if you’d chosen the same paths while not having that deal).

You could see her human body--most people you can because they project it outwards since that’s what they feel they are on some innate sense. She’s got blonde locks and loving eyes and a killer body. But maybe she’s just imagining her looking like that.

But the thing that makes you freeze is the amount of time she’s been here. Everyone has a tally that constantly carves into their right wrist. It’s the only thing that doesn’t get healed every time the person becomes whole again. And hers read 309 years.

It’s not like you haven’t seen counters that get way up there, but you haven’t seen anyone who still seems so _alive_ so high up. Most people crack. She hasn’t, and she is the least broken thing you’ve seen in here.

You compare her to you for a minute and are overcome with immeasurable rage because you _never_ had this sort of goodness to you. You never really had a chance, but here she is so much better than you after 309 years of torture.

You were fourteen. You were twenty-four. You had nothing to complain about. You finish carving out that heart, and force her to eat her own heart. You milk the enjoyment out of her suffering, something you’ve never really done before. You feel your soul get darker, even though you’ve never had a mirror to see how dark you’ve become.

She’s begging you to stop, and you know that you’ve begged people before and you know how stale that feels. But she’s been begging for hundreds of years so who gives a fuck?

You begin taunting her. You rarely taunt anyone. It’s not your MO. You’re usually just an artist who’s fascinated by the endless canvas of human flesh. Now you’re losing it at her.

“ _Ooooh, what did you sell your soul for? Was it worth this? Was it?_ ” You literally stab her uterus and hope she’s had bad enough period pain to be accustomed to that. Then you remember she probably can barely remember Earth in the same way you can. You begin to get scared because you know you’re going to lose your memory if you keep on like this. You realise that that’s all you ever wanted, so why are you scared? You _never_ wanted to feel human. You can never remember anything you ever enjoyed.

You keep saying horrible stuff to her, echoing your own past and making yourself sick. You’ve never told people it in detail like that. Ever. Because no one believed you.

It’s not until you hear her choke out, “ _I didn’t sell my soul_ ,” that you become really intrigued.

What on _Earth_ could she have done then? What did she do to make her end up _here_? Maybe this was all an illusion. Or maybe she killed her father like you dreamt of. But you don’t think she’d still seem this _pure_. You’re almost enamoured by it. You try asking her, dimming down on the torture because you’re _really_ interested now. You haven’t felt this much in so long, you’re feeling _human_ in the torturing and maybe that’s what hell is. It steals your humanity by either tearing away your experiences as human with time and pain or steals them with allowing you to feel alive and darkening your soul.

But she just keeps telling you that she doesn’t know, and you wonder if she’s lying. But why would she? She’s been here for hundreds of years. Maybe she’s delusioned herself? Hundreds of years of torture would do that.

Now you only elicit your wrath on her when she doesn’t respond to your questioning. You know this is unorthodox, that _you_ should not be the one investigating, but she’s interested you from the start.

She’s spitting nonsense at you. All she can make out are facts like “ _Stanford_ ” and “ _Ceiling_ ” and “ _Demon_ ” and “ _Fire_ ”. Her discumbled words say how no one’s ever asked her about any of this; she doesn’t know what you want. She says the last thing she remembers seeing was her boyfriend yelling her name from beneath him before she burnt on the ceiling. Snidely, you ask what his name was. You don’t care. You wouldn’t know anyone from 309 years ago. But when she says “ _Sam, Sam Winchester_ ,” like it’s the only thing she ever even needs to remember in eternity, you drop your knife.

Sam? You know you know Sam. Momentarily, you forget the rest of the context and ask her if she’s Dean. She doesn’t know how to reply.

“ _Dean saved him_ ,” is the closest thing to reply you can get. “ _From the fire_.”

Dean saved Sam from the fire she died in? Demons were involved?

You’re in shock. You’ve been torturing the ex girlfriend of your Sam. The Sam you screwed over. The Sam who really is a good person. And she is too. The Sam that Lilith was so intrigued by. Oh, that important Sam Winchester.

Is she here because of her relation to him?

Suddenly, you’re overcome by injustice. You ask her if she ever even did anything wrong. She says she doesn’t know. And you know she didn’t. You just know. And it’s then you realise that you care. And maybe that’s a human thing. Maybe Hell is doing the opposite to you than it should. Because you really care about her now, and you care about how unjust it is, and the fact that she’s been in Hell for 309 years (you also tally in your head that Hell time must be different than that on Earth because you knew Sam and Dean only a few weeks ago). You care about it enough to be able to forget your rotten past and how trapped you’ve always been to focus on it. You’re going to fix this.

You realise that you aren’t torturing anyone of real importance, so she must just be _forgotten_.

Hell really messed up.

You’re going to fix this.


	3. Does the Difference Define?

You spend a lot more time with her because you asked to, and you do keep torturing her so no one’s raising any eyebrows. Sure, you’re not doing a very good job at making her be in pain, but you never do. It’s all a ritual when you aren’t losing it. You draw into her skin and she screams. And sometimes she doesn’t. She’s grown accustomed to it in some sense--maybe she’s as good at disconnectting as you are.

You realise, sometimes offhandedly when you’re knife is close to your face, that you _really_ want to kiss her. You wonder if that’s just an effect of the rushes of blood and adrenaline. You know for a fact that rape is a usual form of torture; in fact, it’s probably one of the most common, but you could never even trace the outline of someone’s lips with anything but a knife while they’re in your control.

You just couldn’t.

She seems to appreciate you, though. Maybe she thinks you’re weak because of how piss-poor your torturing is, but you doubt it. The pain you deliver is still pain, but at least it’s less unimaginable.

And you always offer her to take up your blade, but she always declines. It’s amazing.

You take a break. No one is watching you 24/7. Most of Hell is propelled by the fact that by the time the souls give in and start torturing, they enjoy it. They get addicted to it. They’re so messed up that they just _go and go and go_. You gave in immediately, so you guess maybe you’re a little less messed up, which is an odd thought. But it allows you to give her a break.

You ask her name. She says she doesn’t remember. She says something about remembering the shape of it on Sam’s face. Memory is weird that way. You slice into her arm and ask her again, but she still says she doesn’t know. She asks you yours.

_Bela._

It’’s a much better name than Abby was. At least Bela was who you created for yourself. She says that’s a pretty name, and you’re again enraged by how much _better_ she is than you. Because, despite the torture, it’s _hard_ to lie in hell. Conceal specific information? That’s easier. But to lie? That’s hard. But you can tell she’s genuine about it. She isn’t trying to get one your good side; she accepted her faith a long time ago. She’s not one with reality in a way that you are, and that’s weird for you because _you’ve_ always been the one who seems to be more screwed up. You suppose Hell’s a whole other ball game.

You tell her you’re sure her name was pretty too. She tries to smile, but you’ve mutilated her face too badly for it to work quite right. You’d feel guilty if you’d allow yourself to. You wonder if that means you’ve become a demon. If so, you have been all along.

She says that you are beautiful, and now you don’t believe her even if everything about her demeanor and the aura she gives off, the soul she has, tells you it’s genuine. Because you are black smoke; you know it. She has been tricking you all along.

You mutilate her body with your knife more, and she apologises; she begs you to stop, and you realise you spoiled her, and you laugh bitterly. She never begged this much before.

You stop when she stops begging. There’s no one who will notice, and you really do want to talk to her. Because, despite your anger, you’re still hell (haha) bent of getting her out of here.

Though you’d never tell her that.

You ask her her name again, and she tells you it’s Jessa. Then she says no, it’s not. My name is Moria. Then she says no, and she’s terrified. You doubt she’s been questioned much, at least not recently, so she’s used to just pain on pain on pain, not pain on break on pain-if-you-don’t-please-me.

You realise how sick you’re making yourself feel, and you tell her that it’s okay. You tell her to ask you something and you won’t react badly at all.

She asks you why you’re in Hell.

Isn’t that the no-no question as a rule? You suppose you spent most of the beginning of your encounter trying to figure that out from her, and you remember. How could you ever forget? Okay, forgetting is easy here, and you’re good at burying memories. But you suppose you’re not really ever going to.

You tell her that she wouldn’t understand. She tells you to try, and you get angry because you think she must just be trying to take up your time, so you don’t start hurting her again, but you remember what her face would like like when you’re start to hurt her with her thinking that she must’ve done something wrong to cause it. So you can’t.

You tell her you were fourteen. And you made a deal.

You think she appears shocked, appalled, but then you tell her it was to kill your parents, and it makes more sense to her. You feel hurt in a way that you haven’t in a long while, a way that’s innately human and makes you wish to fall into whatever blackness is currently enveloping your soul. She won’t understand either. She won’t; she won’t; she won’t.

Then she tells you how sorry she is. She tells you that you don’t deserve this.

You know she’s lying, no matter how much she appears not to be, but it doesn’t stop you from wanting to hear it. You guess you’ve kinda wanted to hear it all your life.

Maybe that was enough for you to give up on any bit of your life, like a ghost. Maybe this was enough to put you at rest and let you lose yourself in becoming a demon.

But you still care about her wellbeing in some way, and that’s not very demon-esque, is it?

You tell her she’s lying; she tells you she’s not. She’s so compassionate, and she _doesn’t_ belong here. She’s not a killer even after all this time. Hell didn’t even turn her into something that did belong in Hell. The idea of going to hell itself turned you into something that belonged in Hell.

You see the difference in the two of you. It kinda just makes you admire her now that you can be angry at whoever kept her here instead of her herself. You continue to torture her, keeping your voice quiet when you tell her that you’re sorry. You find your ability to lose yourself in your pastime as easy as ever because that really is you: so very capable of the separation from your own sense of right and wrong.

 


	4. Decisions Deliver Deals and Vice Versa

Getting any soul out of Hell is very difficult, and you don’t have the stupid Winchesters opening a damn door for you. You wish you could research this now because all the information you have is from research about  _ staying _ out of Hell, not  _ getting _ out. You suppose you never really thought there was any continuation after that day you were dreading, but that’s probably because you never dwelled on it much.

You suppose the best way is to get into the dealing business. Making deals? Now  _ that _ you’re good at; you’ve been getting to be great at that your entire life. You know you’re a valuable commodity; you know the ways to get what you want in this situation. You’ve been listening in on the different shifts and to all the whispers all along--it just hadn’t really struck you as something you really  _ wanted _ . Especially since that meant that Lilith would be your boss again; she would hold your contracts and you’d be working for  _ her,  _ and that kind of made your stomach turn. 

But now you wanted to get  _ her _ out of Hell, and that sounded like an easier way. You mention to your current “boss” (more like lacking supervisor), and he’s  _ eager _ . You know Hell’s on short supply, that they need more souls. Hell needs to be powerful, and the more souls the more power it has. And you, you are good at making deals. And he wants the credit. 

You can’t become a crossroads demon if you  _ aren’t _ a demon, though. And you’re pretty sure she isn’t. He says you’re mostly there, that it’s not an exact science. You wonder if he’s just not seeing pollution of your soul instead of the darkness consuming it or if you’ve really become dark so fast. You think that your soul that you want out would probably get corrupt quickly. 

You really want her out. But you don’t get out of Hell unless you either fight your way out, because a door opens close to you or you are a demon and you’re working for hell. She’s not powerful enough to fight, and those odds aren’t in either of your favours.

When you go back to her, you know you need to tell her your plan. She hasn’t been tortured in what probably feels like a few minutes, but she’s been alone and sometimes that’s worse. She seems out of it. 

You tell her that she needs to start torturing, that she can torture  _ you _ . That you could trade places. You’re scared of finding her wrath on you--you feel like it is quite terrifying once unleashed--but you know that that’s what needs to be done. You need to be the reason her soul gets consumed by the darkness. She laughs at you with that, her attitude changing to something so bitter you can barely recognise off her. She tells you  _ no _ , she’s not giving in because you were  _ nice _ to her.

You feel sick. You were never nice to her. But you suppose you do want to save her, but that’s only because she doesn’t deserve this. You certainly weren’t trying to trick her. You tell her as much, and she thrashes against the chains that have her strung up through her limbs. 

You don’t know what cards to play. You’re good with words usually, but you’re not really used to using them lately, and she’s  _ so _ far from a verbal reality that you don’t really know how to react. So instead, you keep torturing her. She’s weeping and screaming, but it’s all so distant to you. And then, after you carve the day away and she’s whole again, you ask again. You try to keep your words away from the standard, but you realise of course that’s what she’s seeing. 

You unchain her. You chain yourself up. She’s whole, but she’s weak. She’s been strung up for centuries. And you’re screaming embarrassing loudly. You hear her snicker and know she’s not immune to the idea of torturing  _ you _ . She’s probably never had this chance before.

“What if I just run away?” she asks, and you know that’s impossible or you would’ve just simply freed her days ago. But there’s something about the way her voice shakes despite the venom she’s trying to put in it that just makes you shiver.

“You can try. But you’re shiny like a beacon. C’mon, hurt me. We can leave then. And make deals, c’mon,” you say. You know there’s probably too many words for her to really process considering all the words she’s probably heard for so many years were degrading or painful. She laughs again, so bitter and catching, and looks at you.

“Deal? You want to deal? After you lost your soul at fourteen?”

You’re shocked. You had no idea she had been even capable of paying attention to you.

“You don’t deserve to be here,” you say, and you really hope she understands that. “And you have to hurt me now or someone else is going to string you up and...” your voice cracks. You didn’t know it could do that here. “You don’t deserve that.”

“You don’t deserve to be here either,” she says, and now she may as well be fucking torturing you, but you don’t know if other demons would agree.

“You don’t know the things I’ve done.” You try to move to make yourself scream so silence isn’t a signal. Not that anyone’s really paying much attention right now.

“You never lived your life,” she says. Why is she even  _ thinking _ about you? Does she think she is able to play you, and you’ll just let her out? Because you’re  _ trying _ to help her out  _ right now _ .

“Neither did you. And you deserved to.” You let a pregnant silence lapse. “So take that blade and  _ slice me _ .”   
“You can’t undo this,” she says, pointing at your wrist where it read one day. While hers was still going up, yours hasn’t. You haven’t ever really felt  _ ashamed _ for that--you knew your reason, and that was the only thing that gave you peace in how trapped you still were--but when you heard her saying that while pointing at it you felt  _ naked _ . 

“I’m not trying to.”

“It took you a day to decide that the best option in this place was to torture.” She states it like a fact. Like learning about the fucked up mess you are is just some piece of trivia. 

“It took me a few seconds,” you reply. You’re not going to lie to her, but not going to explain yourself either. You’re used to people thinking the worst of you. And how could this be any better than people knowing you killed your parents? “Still think I deserved better?”

“Yes.”

You don’t know what to say to that, but you do know you’re growing to really hate her.

“I can see why Sam liked you,” you say instead, but it’s through gasps of tortured breath because  _ wow _ being strung up like this is painful without the torture.

“I don’t even know who Sam is,” she says, and you know she’s lying because he was the most reoccurring thing she had talked about. 

“Oh, you know. Your demon-hunter boyfriend who probably didn’t actually get saved when you burnt alive.” Now there’s some fury in her eyes, but for some reason it’s still  _ so contained _ .

“His brother saved him.”

“Then he tried to save his brother, and I bet he died then.”

“What do you know about some random guy from centuries ago?” There’s heat in her voice now. You laugh, and it comes out bitter because halfway through it you’re overcome by the astounding amounts of pain crippling you. You’re actually nerveracked by it, and absentmindedly wonder how long you would’ve lasted.

“I knew Sam. And Dean. Time’s different here,” you respond, but you can tell she’s not getting it. Maybe if you just confuse her enough she’ll start attacking you to make you slow down. Maybe you should just spit confusing information at her then. “Dean made a deal too. Trying to track down the holder of the deal, but I already knew how useless it was.”

“What did he look like?” She seems almost calm by it. “How old was he? How old was I?”

“I shot him.”

“I don’t believe you.”

You realise how ridiculous this all is. You’re just trying to  _ help _ her, why is she being so stubborn? You are  _ asking _ her to hurt  _ you _ , not anyone else. You’re giving her permission. And to help her get  _ out _ .

“Dean told me that I wouldn’t, so I did. It was just his arm. And yeah he was probably in his mid twenties. You probably knew him a few years prior.”

“You’re really bad at trying to make me torture you. Other demons? They had me  _ begging _ them to stop at the cost of  _ anything _ else. I want to hear more from you.” Good. She finally slipped up.

“Then start. I’m just trying to help, I promise.”

“Did Sam seem happy?” You refuse to answer. She repeats the question, and you know you’ve caught her. She seems to notice this too, so she just stops. She seems agitated now, probably because of the fact that she’s not had to make decisions in so long; her choice as been set, and now there’s too much time: she can’t just kill it. “Why are you doing this?”

“I just want you to get out. Who knows? Maybe you’ll catch up with Sam. But you don’t deserve to be here,” you say, but the words are getting more difficult to get out all together. 

“I don’t want to change. I don’t want to change.” You see the fear in her essence and the representation of her eyes. 

“You’re going to snap someday,” you start, and you know that’s a bad start because she’s already angrier; you can see it. “Why not have it be with someone asking you to torture them instead of someone begging you not to?”

You see her dissect what you’re saying, what you’ve been meaning to try to get through to her all along. Could this sort of darkness even really corrupt a soul? You hope so.

“Fine,” she finally agrees, and you start to feel shaking fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decided to keep going despite lack of interest.


	5. Torture Teaches Tricks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is really graphic. There is graphic accounts and mentions of torture and has several mentions of past noncon and has other triggering elements related to that. You can probably just skip this chapter and be fine if you don't want to deal with that.

She hasn’t done anything yet. She’s just standing there, a mirage of torture instruments flickering through a range of appeals as her mind goes wild. The time on her wrist has stopped. You did that. You want to laugh; you always knew how to drive the hard bargain, make the toughest sell. But it wasn’t even ever that. You just always knew how to get through a situation in whatever way you could because you were always so desperate. If only you could’ve trust someone along the way.

You don’t want her to know how  _ terrified _ you are. She’s dealt with this for over three hundred years, but you haven’t dealt with a second of it. Flighty images from the childhood you’d rather forget flash in your mind, and you want to laugh because you don’t know who you could’ve possibly been if none of that had ever happened. You have no idea who you are besides the damage.

She’s here now, staring at you like she doesn’t know what to do. She could do anything. And you hate that, and you don’t know why you are doing this besides the fact she’s enamoured you, and you didn’t expect to be so directionless when you were in Hell. Everything’s been so calculated, and now it isn’t. And you don’t know how to respond.

“Just going to stand there looking pretty?” you goad her, but your voice shakes. Vulnerability is not your best suit. Her outward manifestation of an expression is blank. “Why are you so scared of being a demon? Is it the same reason you went to Stanford? You just  _ have _ to be better than everybody?” She stabs you through the eye before you know what’s hit you. Searing hot pain lances through you, and you don’t know how it’s possible to survive. You want to give up already, to beg her to let you go, but the alternative isn’t torture this time: it’s giving up on her. You feel her pull in close to you, but your body is convulsing. The knife is literally white hot inside your head. The damage to your brain doesn’t mess up your ability to register what she’s saying, though.

“I’ve experienced pain you couldn’t even imagine,” she says into your ear. Then she’s biting it, and first you freak out because it’s not painful  _ enough _ , and the idea of sensations that  _ aren’t _ completely painful in this situation would be the absolute definition of hell to you (funny: you were always here all along). But it lasts a short flicker of a second before she’s bitten your earlobe off. You’re brain’s in panic mode. You haven’t ever experienced Hell: you bypassed all of this. You never knew what it’s like to still have all the panic flooding your body, your normal human senses unable to understand what’s going on and reacting to make you confused and panicked, while you’re still alive and conscious and capable of healing, albeit in what  _ seems _ like an eternity--even if it is just a few hours--before you become whole again.

“You want to know what’s been done to me?” she says, and you can hear the anger in her voice, but it’s diminished. It’s as if she knows she’s supposed to be wanting all of this, able to lose herself in all of this, but she can’t. Like it’s been too long. Like she can’t properly displace all her anger. She rubs her hand up your face then scratches her nails down it, getting your skin beneath her fingernails. You wish you weren’t screaming, but you are. You are, and you hate how your brain has gone into panic and how you’re mumbling nonsense between your screams, altering your begs into can’ts. You can’t do this. You say it again and again, and she laughs and carves some sort of pattern into your stomach. Not carving like you would, but the knife is all the way to the hilt--she’s putting in so much effort to move it--and dragging through your intestines and hitting some vital organs that  _ aren’t _ vital since it’s Hell, but they still feel like they are.

“This would be warm up stuff,” she says. Her voice is vacant and terrifying: she’s not really there, but you are, grounded by all the impossible pain, incapable of retreating. “It’s crazy how sadistic demons are, you know that? You were pretty bad at that, but oh,” you see her pause, seeing her pull the knife out of your stomach through the one eye you have that’s fighting you to stay shut. She’s still so brilliant, so bright. Like this isn’t actually going to break her. Like you’re not worth enough to even break her. “They knew how to make me scream. And beg. And every single kind of torture you could  _ imagine _ .” She bends down and is at your feet now, her weapon flickering to a giant syringe. She’s injecting something into your achilles heel, and you don’t care what it is besides the fact that that needle is not quick and painless, and it’s shock after shock after you-can’t-take-this-but-you-can’t-escape-this shock. You don’t know how you can survive a second of this, so less three hundred years. 

“Sometimes they’d leave me alone for hours, left to panic at my mutilated body. Sometimes the pain was dull enough for my least favourite torture to begin: my thoughts and the realisation that  _ I’m in Hell! _ It didn’t even matter that I was a good person! At least I thought I was! Then I would sit there thinking of all the things I thought I didn’t do, but I couldn’t remember enough to whether or not it was true. I could’ve done the worst imaginable things. I couldn’t trust myself through the painful haze.”

“I’m sorry,” you choke out. She stops injecting your calves and comes up to your chest. She laughs.

“You know how many times I’ve had my nipples cut off?” she asks, her voice daydreamy and humourous. You’re shaking at the sound of it and the idea in her head. You’re scared of her hands and her actions and the new ways she’s going to inflict torture on you. And it’s been a few  _ minutes _ . You have no idea how this could go on. Her needle is a razor, and you can’t look down.

You scream and scream. How long could this take? How long until her rage seeps into the rest of her goodness, or at least enough to cover who she really is up? You try to focus on some sort of unimaginable thing, but you’re begging her to stop now. You’re telling her you’re weak, that you really wanted to help, but you don’t think you’re strong enough. You feel pathetic. You never could’ve survived more than a day without caving even if you didn’t give in the first second you arrived.

“You know how many times I’ve been raped?” she asks, and you don’t know what to do because now it’s not even pain. Memories are overtaking your mind, but not the actual ones, just flashes of nonsense you can’t understand that is making you choke. You’re sick. The sickness has destroyed every part of you, every morsel of your being until you were black as soot before you were ever even in Hell. “You know how many different ways people have fucked me? How many different ways I’ve been used and tortured and torn apart?”

You just want it to stop. You can’t take this. You’re begging her, but her hands run down your body, one in a fist still with her tool, until they’re on your hips. You’ve created some sort of means of clothing from your mind before, but it’s gone and all it is is her hands on your naked hips. You’re scared, and she’s gripping your legs so tightly.

“Please don’t, Jessica, please don’t,” you beg. You don’t even know what you’re begging for now, every part of your body is still out crying in pain. Your brain still hasn’t caught up with the knife through your eye. She traces the knife at the top of your hips, just above your vagina, the cold metal turning the entire world into the wrongest, sickest thing you can possibly imagine.

“ _ I didn’t deserve it! _ ” she yells up to you. she drags the knife just below your stomach, slicing you open in even more ways. You tell her she’s right, but you don’t think she can even hear you. She’s been on edge for centuries, and she’s certainly not here right now. As you try to look at her again, forcing your eye to take her in, you see there’s a lot of rage and darkness through that, but you don’t even know if she’s being demonised. You have no idea how she’s still shining so brightly. You guess maybe it just takes  _ time _ to become a demon, to just torture enough. But she has so much to burn off. Maybe you could at least create the illusion of demonisation.

You’re thoughts are cut short when you feel the metal at the entrance of your vagina. You scream once you figure out what’s she’s doing. You know you’ll never be able to heal from what it feels like to yet again not be in control. She hushes you, tells you that if you  _ stay still _ maybe it won’t hurt. She’s inserting the knife inside you, and your muscles don’t know how to deal with that. You’re terrified and tense and you’re sick and you don’t know how to do this. You didn’t expect this to happen (then what  _ did _ you expect to happen). The knife’s in to the hilt, but you don’t really know what that means since your body isn’t really real, but you’re freaking out and you’re scared and this was your worst fear, and if  _ only _ you could’ve just ran away, if only someone would’ve  _ believed you _ , if only your father hadn’t ruined every chance you ever had to really live, if only your mother hadn’t defended everything he did and tell you no one would believe you before you even fucked everything up and sold your soul away...

She’s up at your face again, her hands on on your face, warm and wet with your blood. 

“I could rape you too. I could never stop doing everything I’m doing. I could never make this end...” and you  _ see  _ the red around her, and it’s not black, it’s red. But crossroad demons  _ were  _ red, so many she can pretend, maybe she could just  _ calm down _ and stop, and you guys could try to leave. You try to focus on that rather than the metal inside of you threatening to tear you even further apart. You know it’s not real in every sense, but that doesn’t change the panic or the sickness or the flashes of memories and regret.

“Leave with me, Jess...” You choke out at her, changing from your usually begs. “Let’s leave, now. We can trick them now.”

She laughs and it’s bitter, it’s lost. She doesn’t even know what’s happening. How could she be turning into a demon if she doesn’t know what’s happening right now?

She isn’t: you realise. This is intensity, not time, and time and prolonged hatred is what eats away at the soul. Not rage that anyone could learn to regret. Regretting isn’t part of what being a demon is.

But that doesn’t matter because no one cares about her, and you bet right now she looks pretty messed up. You’re telling her again, telling her now’s your chance (because you  _ can’t _ last like she did; you can’t wait until her soul is black), and you have to take it. She doesn’t understand you; she can’t understand you. You don’t know how to make her understand just the way you didn’t know how to make anyone understand. You don’t know how to make her stop the same way you didn’t know how to make your dad stop. You mention Sam and you feel teeth over where your nipples used to be. You bet your blood got in her mouth.

“Jess!” you yell, and you’re voice is commanding in ways you don’t believe it should be. “Unrack me now,” you say, not asking, just  _ telling _ . “Let me down.”

You don’t how crazy of a response that is, but at least her teeth are no longer on your breasts before she moves again.

You’re screaming when she motions to take you off the rack.


	6. Prettily Protesting Possession

“A number was certainly done on you. Can’t believe you got that one to crack,” he says. He licks his fingers before sticking them down into your wounds. 

“I know,” you breathe through the pain. “Know how to sell, barter. She knows strength. We want to deal,” you say. You know my body should be healing, now that you’re off the rack, but you’re too weak to visualise it, and Hell’s not doing you any favours. 

“Neither of you are demons. Come back in a few years. Maybe you’ll be good then,” he replies. You grit your teeth and let your eyes flash violence towards him.

“Do you need the souls now or in a few years?” you say. You’ve been paying attention. You know that Hell is weak and desperate. They need fuel. And you know you would help them get it. “Where’d we be better? Forgotten and helping  _ nothing _ here, or out there, giving you more and more power?”

“I’m... Crowley is merciless,” the demon says, and you see his fear. You don’t know who Crowley is (you don’t know anyone besides his demon-esque face and your friend supporting your broken weight here), but you assume it’s his superior.

“What would Crowley say if he knew you’d trapped talent here for mediocre torture?”

“I hear he’s going to change things,” he says. You can hear the fear in his voice. “He doesn’t like the  _ mediocre torture _ .”

“Bet he loves more souls in this place,” you say. You actually don’t know that much, but you can tell that bluffing your way through this is working. He yields.

“ _ Your _ soul isn’t even dark,” he says, pointedly at you. 

“Doesn’t matter when it’s red, does it?” He squints his eyes, as if being able to tell how easily you’re playing him, how you know he’s going to give in through all your bluffs and carefully placed words. Your logic seems sound, and you know he’s seeing how you can place it to make it seem such. 

“You  _ would  _ be good at this,” he concludes. You flash your teeth. “Fine. You do know the ritual though, correct?”

“Yarrow tea from a cup molded from black cat’s skull. Pretty basic stuff,” you respond. He nods, and you could laugh at how affronted Jess looks. To both of your luck, she doesn’t respond though, and you feel yourself being transported in miasma of blacks and reds with a stench of death, somehow more intense the the odor that never left Hell. You end up in a graveyard, and with a sudden intense feeling of immateriality. You know you’re supposed to possess someone, and you hate the idea of it, but you move away to the nearest town and possess a lady in bright red high heels and a long coat who’s going for a walk at night. 

“Jess, you have to possess someone,” you yell out, seconds before you’re hit by your sudden corporeal nature. Besides a slight struggle you feel in the back of your brain from the inhabitant of this body that isn’t you, you feel nothing but control. You haven’t felt this real in forever, and the unreality of a mirage of a body made you feel less powerful than you realised. You breathe in the cold, crisp night air and feel  _ alive _ .

You feel alive. You were dead. You  _ are _ dead. You are dead dead dead, but you feel so alive. 

“I don’t like this at all,” you hear an older woman say as she turns toward you. 

“I love it,” you say. Then you see a buff man with a neck tattoo walking towards you. 

“Nice tits,” he comments vulgarly. You turn your cheek to him.

“Should have seen them on my rotting one,” you say. He laughs at that, and the chill of the night and the sense of disgust building up deep in your stomach, clotting out your throat, also reminds you all too much of being human. Jess doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t comment on her current attire either, even to compliment the old night-gown she’s sporting.

“Now to walk to the graveyard,” he says, a little annoyed. You don’t have a clue of the distance you travelled while being smoke, but it takes a mile or two of walking to get back to the cemetery. You cross it, and for some reason--maybe the fears of the body you’re possessing--you feel a bit of fear from the knowledge of the decaying bodies beneath the ground. Logically, you mostly just feel sick to know that  _ you _ are rotting as well, your body decomposing, a shredded, torn up messed that left blood stains on the hotel floor. 

You make it to the crossroads to see your demon associate pull out a skull goblet and a vile of amber liquid. He motions for you to sit in the center. It’s bizarre, suddenly hearing and seeing and sensing, to be here, where your senses are hyperactive from dread. You can hear the wind, hear a distant creak of a gate. The night sky is dark, and the ground is dusty. He passes you the cup, and you drink from it, barely aware that the container used to contain a cat’s brain despite your acute senses. You scream when you feel your blood boil. He’s chanting, and at first you’re scared it’s an exorcism, that he’s sending you right back to where you came from, and you’re  _ terrified _ , but everything is turning red, your vision is clouded in the smoke of it, and you feel it smogging up the linings of your mind. 

The red consumes everything until it runs out of the fragile energy that you consider who you are, and everything filters away into saturated blackness.

\---

You wake up covered in dirt in the middle of some country road. It’s dawn, clouds sieving light particles to a sunny gray. Your body’s uncontrollable, and you feel slightly crazed from a screaming voice in the back of your head that makes you want to slice up your body to shut it up. With that thought, the screaming subsides, if not only to come back full force moments later. 

You pay attention to the brown dust on your black jacket and the humidity tangible this earlier in the morning instead of the screaming woman who doesn’t like her body being out of her control.

“I know you,” says an older woman beside you, her white pajamas bemired.

“Do you know you,” you ask. You’re still curious if you even have the right name for her.

“I know. The facts. The rest has blurred. I don’t have any connection to it,” she says. “My name is Jess, or something like that. I went to some college with my boyfriend Sam. I died on a ceiling hearing him scream, burning alive. Fun facts. I...I don’t care though. I suppose I care about Sam. Wow, I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

“It’s okay. Nice hearing talking that isn’t begging,” you say. She winces at that and a look of fear comes over her wrinkly face.

“What...” she seems suddenly confused, off focus from the flashes of memories from hundreds of years ago to thinking of the ordeal she went through. You don’t think you’re sure if she’ll ever get through that.

“It’s okay. It’s okay, you’re okay,” you say, and you’re confused too. You really never planned ahead. You always tried to stay out of Hell, but the idea that life continued after you died really seemed bizarre. Maybe that was just human instinct, to stay alive. You never cared about the afterlife.

“I don’t like the fact I’m possessing this poor lady. She keeps quoting the Bible and begging me to let her go,” she says after a moment. She looks really uncomfortable, shifting nervously. You decide to get up. 

“I wish this lady would do that. She’s just fucking screaming at me. Got enough of that to last however long my existence is,” you reply. “We could always just... kill someone then possess their corpse. That would work?”

“I may be a demon, but murder is still pretty abhorrable to me.”

“‘Abhorrable.’ Freakin’ Stanford smart ass.”

“I’m surprised I can remember how to say anything,” she says, ignoring your insult. 

“Let’s just ignore Hell, okay?” you decide. “It’s too much.”

“Let’s go to a hospital,” she says. You squint at her. 

“Why?”

“I want to wait around for someone to die. To possess them. I don’t want to possess someone who doesn’t want me to,” she explains.

“This is why he didn’t want us leaving Hell. Like hell, you’re not a demon,” you say, but the truth is you agree--if not just because you want the screaming to stop. “We... have to be careful though. We have to buy a lot of souls to prove we’re worth it.”

“I still can’t believe that you’re okay with buying souls after what happened to you.” She looks down to the ground, as if expecting you to lash out, her grandmotherly effect making her disapproval hurt all the more.

“‘Cause I’d much rather see them torture you,” you respond bitterly. She meets you eyes, eyebrows raised, eyes wide and piercing.

“Really? Nothing to do with the fact you have more control now?”

“What the fuck?”

“I think... I may have been a psychology major?”

“I suppose that’s good. We can use that to help trick people.”

“We’ve got my forgotten psychology skills and your questionable morals.”

“We should both have questionable morals. We are demons.”

“I’m going to let this woman go now. It’s not fair to her.” You sigh.

“I should probably do the same. Email me your location at  raremagicdeals@yahoo.co.uk . I’m guessing it’s still active since you had spent hundreds of years for whatever amount of time it took for me to get there or whatever. I um. Will also...” you fight a sick feeling you’ve been ignoring. “I’m going to go to a hospital too. That is a good idea. I don’t know why more demons don’t do it.”

“They don’t care.”

“I guess he was right when he said I wasn’t..” you stop. You’ve been fully gone since you were fourteen. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to possess someone or not. That’s just you being squeamish since it brings up your own feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. Nothing to do with still being worthy of anything good.

“Okay. So rare magic deals,” she looks at you curiously. “At Yahoo dot co dot uk.” After that, a red smoke fills the horizon. It makes you sad, knowing that that used to be brilliant and iridescent, so bright it hurt to look at. You ruined her like you ruined yourself, but at least she’s out of Hell.

You fear you were just to scared to go it alone. Was she better off being tortured for eternity than destroyed?

You feel teeth on your neck before you’re aware of anything else. Someone is quoting the Bible, Jess. Why? Oh, right. You fumble against the old woman, terrified even though she can’t kill  _ you _ . You find pepper spray in the bottom of your pocket and spray her in the face. She screams. You flinch too, it poisoning the air around you. You stumble backwards.

“You do realise you’d just kill  _ her _ ,” you spit at the woman, who is unresponsive, covering her eyes, shaking. 

You leave at that, ascending out of the scared woman’s body to leave her and her assailant some quality time to discuss the therapy they probably both needed.

For some reason the words Jess said to you stick in your head more than you’d like. But whatever. You can sell. At least that’s not torturing anyone.

It’s not like you’re gonna send them to literally Hell. 

At least they are fucking dumb or evil enough to make the deals anyways. But you think you’re gonna make sure they’re at least twenty-five. Just. For fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no abandoned this. Come read the only bela/jess fanfic out there. Come read one of the two bela/adam fanfics on AO3. Come read Bela's story, the one that deserved to be told.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know if you like it! I've written a lot more so far and plan on doing so, so if you want me to post it just let me know (otherwise I'll just write it for myself). (my url on tumblr is eridanusupervvoid).
> 
> Bela/Jessica is not a ship I was ever planning on writing yet here we are I guess.


End file.
